1 Peter Week 1: Justification, Sanctification, and the Eternal Security of the Believer

I am going to be posting the notes from my talks (the ones that I write myself) on a regular basis. I will try to format them as much as possible, but they will all mostly be just the manuscript that I teach from.

Justification: Sanctification: and the Eternal Security of the Believer

OK, so that’s the title today. I know those are all big concepts, but we are going to spend some time working through what each of those mean and even come up with some practical reasons why it is important to know those things. But before we get too far down this road let’s take a look at this book of 1 Peter as a whole.

1 Peter Overview

So who was Peter?

OK, so towards the end of Peter’s life he was in prison in Rome. It is believed that this is where he wrote this letter. It would be written somewhere in the early 60s (that is in the 0 60s) so somewhere around 30 years after Jesus and right at the start of the Roman persecution of the church. The recipients of the letter were being persecuted, but the persecution wasn’t a government policy yet, but rather local persecution.

Peter is writing to a mainly Gentile audience meaning people who weren’t Jewish so they had become Christian from one of the pagan Roman religions not Judaism

The people that Peter was writing to would be Christians who were dealing with lots of outside persecution. He wrote to them to teach them and encourage them I think there are lots of ways that Christianity is being pushed against today.
Some of that is of our own making and some of it is because of outside forces. I believe that we can take courage from what we read in 1 Peter.

Justification, Sanctification, Eternal Security

So with all of that said, let’s dive into this idea of Justification, Sanctification, and Eternal Security of the Believer.

Peter 1:3–9 (HCSB)
Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great
mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead 4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable,
uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. 5 You are being protected
by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in
the last time. 6 You rejoice in this, though now for a short time you have had
to struggle in various trials 7 so that the genuineness of your faith —more
valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire —may result in
praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 You love Him,
though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe
in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 because you are
receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Wow, this is a dense bit of text isn’t it. Let’s read it in The Message translation
and see if it clears things up a bit.

1 Peter 1:3–9 (The Message)
• 3–5 What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him,
this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead,
we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including
a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch
over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed
and whole.
• 6–7 I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to
put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the
fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes
out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your
gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.
• 8–9 You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him,
yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing,
you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.

That cleared it up a bit, but still probably needs a sentence or two diagrammed to make it 100% clear. So let’s take this in sections.

We have a new birth and a living hope

What is this new birth that is being talked about here?

What do you think it means that we have a living hope?

Look back at verse 3. Where do we get this living hope from?

Because Jesus didn’t stay dead we have a living hope. That is what we can make as the basis for our new life.

Check out verse 9. What is the goal of our faith?

So now we have a few concepts bouncing around. We have faith and that leads to salvation. We have this new birth and living hope that comes from Jesus and then this idea in verse 4 that is talking about an inheritance that never fades or perishes.

That’s still a whole lot of information to digest, so let’s let the guys from “What’s in the Bible” break it down for us a bit.

So we see there what it means to be justified. That is this whole New Birth thing that we are talking about. We were people who once had no hope and because of Jesus we now have a living hope.

The cool thing is that since that hope is based not on our own goodness or our own merit, but on God’s we can trust that our salvation is eternal.

Sanctification

So as a believer we have eternal security because the Bible is pretty clear that this gift of God can’t be lost or given away. So then as people who have been made right by Jesus how then should we live. If we can’t ever lose our position with God can we just go out and live however we want to live?

Actually yes, because as you are shaped by God he will shape your desires so that they are the way that he wants you to live, but that is later in this process. We are in a process of becoming more and more like Jesus.

We call that process Sanctification

We are being made more like Jesus

The Bible is pretty explicit in the idea that once we are saved we need to be motivated not to just run off and sin, but actually the opposite. The love of Christ in your life compels you to live like Jesus.

1 Peter 1:13–16 (HCSB)

13 Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be serious and set your
hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires
of your former ignorance. 15 But as the One who called you is holy,
you also are to be holy in all your conduct; 16 for it is written, Be holy,
because I am holy.

So we are to be like Jesus and that means that we are to be holy why? Because God is holy and we are to be like him.

What does holy mean?

What is our motivation for being holy?

Our motivation is the love of Jesus and the grace that we have received.

Why do you think our motivation matters?

Different motivations totally change the way that we perceive the same actions. If I choose to do something I am much more willing to do it than if I am made to do it. Why? Because my motivation is different. I was going to try to come up
with some scenarios about people with different motivations, but instead I am going to let you do that. So here is your assignment:

Motivation Activity

Write a short 1 or 2 sentence story about an action that someone takes and then reveal their real motivation behind that action. Make sure that when you reveal their motivation you are changing the way that we perceive their
actions.

For instance. Spot, the German shepherd sees a child drowning in the river and immediately jumps in and drags the child to safety. Now we all think, YAY Spot! But what we don’t know is that Spot saved the child because he was hungry and
the child looked like an easy snack.

You see, motivation matters.

Come up with your own. (Do the activity)

Debrief the Scenarios: In each of these scenarios we see that motivation matters. The motivation we have for living a sanctified life matters too. It matters because our motivation will change our rate of success.

If we are tying to live like God out of guilt we will eventually resent the rules

If we are trying to live like God out of gratitude we will eventually forget why we are grateful But if we are motivated by God’s love for us then we can continually have the strength to live like Jesus.

OK, so that is a quick look at the beginning of 1st Peter next week we are going to flesh out what it means to be a child of God and how that helps us live holy lives.

Pray

Share this:

I don't have all of the answers and some weeks it feels like I don't have any of the answers. I often find a good word picture or object lesson and build the lesson off of that instead of the other way around. I don't always pray as much as I should and I never study as much as I should.
But I love students ministry. I love watching teenagers as they serve God. I love to see them worship and forget about themselves for a while. I love seeing someone wake up to the love of God if only for a little while. I love to see them out serving their community and sharing the love of Christ with others. I love to be a part of their lives and I love seeing the world through their eyes. I am an average youth minister.

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About Me

I don't have all of the answers and some weeks it feels like I don't have any of the answers. I forget students names sometimes and say stupid things that hurt their feelings. I often find a good word picture or object lesson and build the lesson off of that instead of the other way around. I have put the finishing touches on a Wednesday night Bible study on Wednesday more times than I can count. I don't always pray as much as I should and I never study as much as I should. I try every new youth ministry model that comes from the "experts" and I have had at least 3 mission statements over the past 5 years.

But I love students ministry. I love watching teenagers as they serve God. I love to see them worship and forget about themselves for a while. I love seeing someone wake up to the love of God if only for a little while. I love to see them out serving their community and sharing the love of Christ with others. I love to be a part of their lives and I love seeing the world through their eyes. Like I said, I'm an average youth pastor.

About Nailscars.com

For over 10 years now I have been trying to add creative ideas for use in the local church. In the early days Nailscars.com was just a place to publish some scripts, but it has become a collection of creative ministry resources for youth ministry and worship.

I began writing a blog more to process my own thoughts more than anything else. As I started writing the comments that I got back from people amazed me. As I was honest with my struggles most of them would write and say “Thank you.” “It is just nice to know someone else struggles with these same things,” was a common response.

So this has become a place where I share the struggles and successes of being in youth ministry. I hope that you find something that God can use in your life and ministry.